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Cell service outages all over the place, including 911 calls

waybomb

waybomb

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Anybody else having cell service issues? I am in SW Michigan. My phone is not connecting. Wifi connected to land line internet works.
Went online. Seems reports are coming from all over the country.
 
waybomb said:
Anybody else having cell service issues? I am in SW Michigan. My phone is not connecting. Wifi connected to land line internet works.
Went online. Seems reports are coming from all over the country.
Click to expand...
I'm Okey here in northwest Iowa but I have had occasional issues over the past few months.
 

AT&T, other cell service providers having outages, customers report

AT&T had by far the most reports, customers told tracking website Downdedector.com. There was no word on the source of the problem.
www.cbsnews.com
Customers of numerous U.S. cell service providers were reporting outages early Thursday morning, according to the website Downdetector.com, which tracks such reports. AT&T had by far the most, with tens of thousands of customers telling Downdetector they had no service.

Customers of T Mobile, Verizon, UScellular and Consumer Cellular were also reporting issues, though far, far fewer.

The reports of AT&T outages appear to have started at around 4 a.m. EST, Downdetector said, seemed to be waning some two hours later, then picked up again and were topping 60,000 at 7:30 a.m. EST.

Some municipalities were experiencing difficulties with 911 service.


The San Francisco Fire Department said in a post on X, the former Twitter, "We are aware of an issue impacting AT&T wireless customers from making and receiving any phone calls (including to 911). We are actively engaged and monitoring this. The San Francisco 911 center is still operational."

It added, "If you are an AT&T customer and cannot get through to 911, then please try calling from a landline. If that is not an option then please try to get ahold of a friend or family member who is a customer of a different carrier and ask them to call 911 on your behalf. Do not call or text 911 to simply test your phone service."

In North Carolina, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said on X at 3:15 a.m. EST that it was "aware of a nationwide outage impacting AT&T cell phone customers this morning. Customers were briefly unable to contact 9-1-1. There are no disruptions to our call center's ability to receive 9-1-1 calls. Service should be returning shortly."

And in Florida, the Flagler County Sheriff's Office posted on X at 6:43 a.m. EST that, "Texts to 911 from affected AT&T users are now being received. If you have an emergency, and cannot dial out, send a text message to 911."

The transit system serving Philadelphia and its suburbs, SEPTA, said on X that, "Due to AT&T communication outages, some trains may reflect a delay, however all trains are operating on or close to schedule."

AT&T
In a statement to CBS News, AT&T said that some customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions.

"We are working urgently to restore service to them," the statement said. "We encourage the use of wi-fi calling until service is restored."

As of 8 a.m. ET on Thursday, Downdetector had more than 60,000 reports of service issues from AT&T customers. Most of the complaints were focused on problems with their mobile phones or wireless service.

Outages were highest in Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Louisville, Miami and San Antonio, according to Downdetector.

Verizon
In a statement to CBS News, Verizon said its network is operating normally, although some customers experienced issues earlier Thursday when calling or texting people who use another carrier. It said that it's continuing to monitor the situation.

T-Mobile
A spokesperson for T-Mobile said it didn't experience an outage and that its network is operating normally.

"Downdetector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks," the spokesperson said.
 
I have AT&T cellular and it works today.

But my Internet is out. Which I presume is unrelated? We had big lightning & thunder here last night starting about 10:30pm. The kind that shakes the house and drives the dogs to seek shelter. My internet is wide area WiFi off a tower on the Illinois side of the state line. Not sure if that is affected by the cell outage or if it was a lightning strike?
 
I'm in northwestern Ontario Canada so different networks but we've been having issues up here for a while. Phone showing 4 bars yet can't send a text or make a call.
 
NorthernRedneck said:
I'm in northwestern Ontario Canada so different networks but we've been having issues up here for a while. Phone showing 4 bars yet can't send a text or make a call.
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That's what mine has 3+ bars but if you went to web page it said off line, texts wouldn't go through I tried to connect to xfinity wifi but signal wasn't strong enough, plant internet and wifi worked but I cant put my phone on their wifi.
 

FBI and Homeland Security 'urgently investigating' whether AT&T outage was a CYBERATTACK - as security expert tells DailyMail.com it has all hallmarks of a hack​

  • Thousands of Americans have been without cellular service for hours
  • The issue stems from a nation wide outage hitting AT&T and other providers
  • READ MORE: How to FIX your iPhone amid AT&T and other cell network outages
By STACY LIBERATORE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 13:47 EST, 22 February 2024 | UPDATED: 16:49 EST, 22 February 2024
Federal agencies are 'urgently investigating' whether the massive cellular outage that plagued Americans on Thursday was a cyberattack.

The Federal Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are on the hunt to track down what disrupted service AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and a dozen other cellular providers.

While the agencies have not shared details, a security expert told DailyMail.com that the outage has hallmarks of a hack.

Lee McKnight, associate professor at Syracuse University in New York, said the widespread nature appears to be 'a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack on core Internet infrastructure.'

This type of attack attempts to crash a website or online service by bombarding it with a torrent of superfluous requests at exactly the same time.

The surge of simple requests overload the servers, causing them to become overwhelmed and shut down.

McKnight, who is also an Affiliate of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism (INSTC), noted that DDOS is becoming a popular assault among cybercriminals.

He referenced the event in 2016, which saw the Mirai botnet bring down sites like Netflix, Twitter, Amazon and PayPal.

'Some of those were launched by - kids for fun - others by malicious actors,' said McKnight.

'Reality is you cant rent DDOS as a service attacks by the hour on the Dark Web, so who exactly might be behind it may never by fully known/attributed.'

The purpose of disrupting cellphone services could simply be to cause chaos, by preventing 911 calls.

But the outage could simply be a byproduct of the hackers' real intention - espionage.

After gaining access to mobile carriers' internal servers, the hackers would have access to call data records on customers.

That would provide information like geolocation data, call logs and text messages.


The professor had speculated a cloud misconfiguration could also be the culprit, which means the outage was caused by human error.

'A major cloud service provider such as AWS or Azure experiencing an outage at one of their data centers is possible but less likely to be the cause in my opinion,' McKnight said.

Full article:
www.dailymail.co.uk

Security expert tells Daily Mail outage has hallmarks of cyberattack

Federal agencies are 'urgently investigating' the cellular outage, but a security expert told DailyMail.com that the event appears to be an attack on core Internet infrastructure.
www.dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk
 
I looked at a couple articles yesterday suggesting it was not a cyber attack.

Curious to find out what the real cause is.
 
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It could be me but I don't trust FBI and Homeland Security to investigate this they have lost all credibility with me.
I'm sure there's some good people in the ranks but management is so corrupt they have a long road to go to be a creditable department!
 
Interestingly enough, my SIL who has an older I-phone 6, or perhaps an 8, didn't have any problems while lots of other people in the area were affected. So, it might be that it was only newer phones that were affected by the blackout.
 
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EastTexFrank said:
Interestingly enough, my SIL who has an older I-phone 6, or perhaps an 8, didn't have any problems while lots of other people in the area were affected. So, it might be that it was only newer phones that were affected by the blackout.
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I also wonder if it is related to the area code of the phone? As we are a very mobile society there are many people who have area codes from other states/areas in each area. The outages are not 100% in one area. Some people have service, some do not. Just another possible question to be answered.
 
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My 14 month observation of cell is,
My devices seem to be using wifi to make voice calls.
Verizon is absolutley horid
Att much better. I run the lower 48 and winnepeg east to Ottawa att and verizon very comparable with att being better away from major routes.

Yesterday att was very ok. Today one misdialed call
 
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waybomb said:
How about that? Just recieved a text from ATT stating I'm getting a $5 credit on my bill as a result of this fiasco.
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My husband sent me an article that stated most affected users will get $5 credit...glad you'll get yours. I don't know yet if we'll get anything.
 
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